The CEO and founder of hardware specialist Nvidia Jensen Huang has called out the achievements of Asian Americans amid racist attacks following the coronavirus pandemic.
The exec was accepting the Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award at the Asian American Engineer of the Year Awards 2020-2021 – as reported by GamesBeat – said that racism needs to stop. Huang went on to highlight the contribution that immigrants such as his parents made to America.
Due to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic's origins in Wuhan, China, there has been a considerable increase in hate crimes against people of Asian descent. In February of this year, anti-racism group Stop AAPI Hate claimed that it had received 2,808 firsthand accounts of anti-Asian hate across the United States between March 2020 – when the pandemic first hit – and the end of the year.
“Racism is one flywheel we must stop," Huang said.
"Like other immigrants, Asian Americans make up the fabric of America, have benefited from but also contributed significantly to building this great country. Though America is not perfect, it’s hard as a first-generation immigrant not to feel a deep sense of gratitude for the opportunities she offered. I only hope America offers future generations the same opportunities she afforded me.”
Huang was born in Taiwan before his parents moved to the United States. In 1993, he co-founded graphics specialist Nvidia, which today is a dominating force in both the games sector and the computing industry at large.